You Can Gentrify Anything Today. What Does that Say About Society?
Boston University sociologist’s new book looks at how the meaning of the term has changed
Japonica Brown-Saracino is the author of The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea. Photo by Leise Jones
You Can Gentrify Anything Today. What Does that Say About Society?
Boston University sociologist Japonica Brown-Saracino’s new book looks at how the meaning of gentrification has changed
Boston University ethnographer Japonica Brown-Saracino says gentrification means more than a fresh coat of paint and rising real estate prices in old neighborhoods. It’s about how the market can turn anything into a hot commodity—and take it out of the hands of the people who nurtured it.
Brown-Saracino, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor and chair of sociology, specializes in urban and community sociology and cultural sociology. Her new book, The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea (Princeton University Press, 2026) examines how the word has evolved from a description of neighborhood change to a socially charged metaphor for cultural appropriation, upscaling, and loss of authenticity.
Think changes to food, tattoos, certain styles of dress and music—not just physical spaces. “We’ve had more than 60 years of living with brick-and-mortar gentrification as a basic fact of urban and now small-town life,” Brown-Saracino says. “I don’t think it’s surprising that it’s available for us to use to talk about other kinds of things as well.”
A discussion of the book on Wednesday, February 4, launches the new Gentrification & Urban Displacement Lab at the BU Initiative on Cities (IOC).
“Japonica’s new book is a perfect segue into the launch of the lab,” says Loretta Lees, faculty director of the IOC and a CAS professor of sociology. “Gentrification is a metaphor for class war in all its different guises globally. Understanding what gentrification is today and the intricate relationship between gentrification and displacement is an important first step in the collaborative fight against gentrification-induced displacement that our lab seeks to support.”
The Brink talked to Brown-Saracino, an IOC urban faculty fellow, about the book, the various forms of gentrification, and culture’s role in urban change.
Q&A
with Japonica Brown-Saracino
The Brink: I wasn’t aware that gentrification had died. In fact, I thought it was thriving, at least in Massachusetts. What we’re talking about here is the form of it?
Brown-Saracino: Or the meaning of the word. I distinguish between what author Sarah Schulman calls literal gentrification, which is brick-and-mortar gentrification—the gentrification we would all think about—and then “gentrification” as a word, which I argue is often deployed as a metaphor to describe all kinds of change. That includes change that has very little to do with cities—like how individuals change, or how communities change, how food changes, how music changes, and so on.
The Brink: So, that broadening of the definition has less to do with real estate than it does with class in a whole bunch of ways?
Absolutely. Often we use the term as a way to talk about the changing class status of something. It could be a neighborhood, food, music, a person. So, if a person “upscales,” or a form of music is thought to become more rarefied, we might say that they gentrified. There’s an article by some scholars who argue that tattoos have gentrified, for instance, that they once were a working-class object and now people pay tons of money, often in gentrified neighborhoods, to get tattoos.
The Brink: But this is more than just about the price tag, right?
Sometimes it’s a way of talking about the appropriation of items that were associated with working-class people of color by more affluent white individuals. So we talk about how foods that were associated with working-class people of color have now become popular among white elites, for instance, and we might say that it’s gentrified.
The Brink: “That hot chicken sandwich will be $48.”
Yes! So, I think it’s become shorthand for talking about social inequalities and capitalism without having to call those things by name—to say that something’s been appropriated, or that something’s become more upscale, or to say that something that didn’t used to have much value has now been assigned a lot of monetary value. When people use “gentrification” in this way, they’re typically offering a critique of those kinds of inequalities or of the heightened economic value of something that once was more authentic.
I think [gentrification has] become shorthand for talking about social inequalities and capitalism without having to call those things by name—to say that something’s been appropriated, or that something’s become more upscale.
The Brink: I’ve also heard this said about things like punk rock…
Yes. It’s about items that once belonged to the marginalized or that seemed countercultural now belonging to people who are thought of as the opposite of marginalized, people with status and power. Something being brought into the mainstream.
And, again, I think part of why we turn to gentrification as a metaphor to explain these things is because we’re not very good in contemporary American society at having direct conversation about the kinds of economic and political systems and inequalities that are involved in taking something from a marginalized group and making it commercial and mainstream and potentially expensive.
Efforts to study brick-and-mortar gentrification and policies and practices that can mitigate displacement are more important than ever. Part of why people are using gentrification to have difficult conversations about inequalities is because brick-and-mortar gentrification is so prevalent, and because more and more people recognize that neighborhood gentrification is a problem. That’s why the work that the Gentrification & Urban Displacement Lab will do is so important.
The Brink: How does this affect your teaching?
I teach a course on Boston neighborhoods, and sometimes if we’re out on a field trip and we encounter a tour guide or someone else talking about gentrification, I always ask the students to think, “What was that person gesturing to when they used the term?” Because what they’re gesturing to has specific implications for the kinds of policies needed to address the problem. And they’re not always pinpointing the same problem or calling for the same policy solution.
Event Details
Gentrification: Ideas to Action
A discussion of Japonica Brown-Saracino’s The Death and Life of Gentrification: A New Map of a Persistent Idea and the launch of IOC’s Gentrification & Urban Displacement Lab.
Register here.
Rajen Kilachand Center Colloquium Room, 1st Floor, 610 Commonwealth Ave.
